Wednesday, August 18, 2010

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life."
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work."
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There's no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you're alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6. "There" is no better a place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."
7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.

(excerpted from the revised and expanded edition of
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia by Rob Brezsny)

Imagine this scene. You're really thirsty -- so dehydrated that you're feeling faint. Yet here's the weird thing: You're walking along the bank of a wide river that's so clear you could see the bottom if you looked.

But you're not looking. In fact, you seem oblivious to the surging force of nature just a few yards away.

Is it invisible to you? Are you so preoccupied with your suffering that you're blind to the very source that would end your suffering?

Up ahead you see a man. As you approach, you realize he's holding a bottle of water. You run to him and beg him to let you drink. He readily agrees. Gratefully, you guzzle the precious liquid, then thank him profusely.

As you walk away, he calls after you, "By the way, there's a lot more water over there," and he points to the river.

Do you hear him? If you hear him, do you believe him? Or do you keep walking, hoping to find another person with another bottle somewhere up ahead?